Pipework lets you connect together containers in arbitrarily complex scenarios. Pipework uses cgroups and namespaces and works with "plain" LXC containers (created with lxc-start), and with the awesome Docker. It's nothing less than Software-Defined Networking for Linux Containers! This is a short presentation about Pipework, given at the Docker Networking meet-up November 6th in Mountain View. More information: - https://github.com/jpetazzo/pipework - http://www.meetup.com/Docker-Networking/

1. Pipework

2. Pipework
The little SDN container framework
that you should NOT use

4. Jérôme
Petazzoni
(@jpetazzo)
 Grumpy French DevOps
- Go away or I will replace you
with a very small shell script
 Runs everything in containers
- Docker-in-Docker
- VPN-in-Docker
- KVM-in-Docker
- Xorg-in-Docker
- ...

5. Outline
● History
● Features
● Roadmap

6. Use cases
● Performance
– Linux bridge, iptables, conntrack... Ohnoes!
● Integration into existing networks
– VLAN, bonding...
– IP addr management
● Work at L2/L3 instead of L4
– Ethernet/IP vs TCP, UDP

7. Modus Operandi
● Create network interfaces
● Move them to containers
(while they're running)
● Configure network interfaces
(from outside)
● Shell script

8. Seriously

9. Shell…?

10. Yup.

11. Upsides of /bin/sh
● Easy to understand
● Easy to rip out the bits you (don't) need
● Most things we do require exec anyway
(ip, route, brctl, etc)
● Complicated stuff is hard to implement
(avoid feature creep, e.g. IPAM)

12. Features
● Start a container:
docker run --name db mysql
● Give it an IP address:
pipework eth0 mysql 10.1.1.1/24

13. Features
● Start a container:
docker run --name db mysql
● Give it an IP address:
pipework eth0 mysql 10.1.1.1/24
^^^^
● Physical eth0 on the machine

14. Features
● Start a container:
docker run --name db mysql
● Give it an IP address:
pipework br0 mysql 10.1.1.1/24
^^^
● Pre-existing bridge

15. Features
● Start a container:
docker run --name db mysql
● Give it an IP address:
pipework ovsbr0 mysql 10.1.1.1/24
^^^^^^
● Open vSwitch bridge

16. Features
● Start a container:
docker run --name db mysql
● Give it an IP address:
pipework ovsbr0 mysql dhcp
^^^^
● DHCP

17. Features
● Start a container:
docker run --name db mysql
● Give it an IP address:
pipework ovsbr0 mysql dhcp @10
^^^
● VLAN

18. Features
● Fixed address or DHCP
● Random MAC or fixed MAC
● Change netmask, default route
● Linux bridges, OVS bridges
● IP over Infiniband
● Multiple interfaces

19. Roadmap

21. Pipework:
● Will not be integrated into Docker
(probably)
● Is not necessary anymore in many cases
(thanks to host networking)
● Is not actively maintained
(but I'll happily merge PRs)

22. What do?
● Use it as a big toolbox
● Understand how things work
● Possibly extract what you need
● Contribute to Docker instead

23. Possible improvements
● Don't require host-side tooling anymore
● Allow operation over Docker API
● A small POC is available at:
https://github.com/jpetazzo/plumber/

24. A brighter future
● Native Docker Multi-Host Networking
https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/8951
● Docker Network Drivers
https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/8952

25. Thank you!
Questions?